"I think I might be in trouble"

Last week a photograph of Tony Blair's wife perched on the edge of the marital bed with her controversial friend Carol Caplin obsessed the British media. What was she thinking?
Barbara Ellen tells all.

Cherie Booth was right. - the only journalist who was actually on the
spot at the time - tells all.

What a flawed woman - but how fascinating it was to meet her. Last week the
whole country was asking the same question: how could Cherie Blair be so mad or
so stupid as to allow herself to be intimately photographed on her marital bed
with her "lifestyle guru" Carole Caplin perched beside her, applying her
lipstick? I am probably better equipped to comment than most as I was the only
other person present when this and other pictures were taken by
photographer† Jane Hodsonfor a "Day in the Life" feature on Cherie Blair
for British Marie Claire magazine. However, although Jane and I know
what happened that May afternoon, we probably have as little idea as anybody
else as to what Cherie could possibly have hoped to get out of it.

When Marie Claire approached me to interview Cherie I leapt at the
chance. Of course I did. This was the woman famously described as "too scary,
too feminist and too clever" when her husband first came to power; the "First
Lady" embraced as a refreshing antidote to Norma Major, but who, as time went
on, became increasingly mocked and vilified for the New Age remedies, blagged
holidays and Queenly manners.

Then, of course, there was Cherie-gate, which culminated in Mrs Blair
apologising on television for the public being misled about her receiving
financial advice on two buy-to-let flats from Caplin's then-boyfriend, convicted
fraudster Peter Foster. Since then Cherie seems to have become the ultimate New
Labour Icarus, free-falling from grace under a suddenly hostile media sun.

On the other hand, for all the people critical of Cherie there seem to be
just as many who are fascinated by her. The last time a job of mine provoked
such a flurry of interest among my nearest and dearest was when I interviewed
Madonna, which for some of you might say it all. Nevertheless, Marie
Claire was clearly right in thinking that a lot of people would be
interested in a feature shadowing Cherie through a typical working day,
hopefully gaining some insight into the public and private Cherie - the top
barrister, mother of four, charity worker, public speaker and Prime Minister's
wife.

On the day, our brief was to meet Cherie at her chambers in central London,
follow her to a young women's refuge run by Barnardo's and finish at the Asian
Women of Achievement awards at the Park Lane Hilton. We were also down to "spend
time with Cherie" inside the Blairs' Downing Street living quarters, but we
would be dealing throughout with the notoriously protective Downing Street PR
machine led by Fiona Millar, still Cherie's closest official media aide. And
then there would be Cherie herself, whose one-to-one encounters with the media
seem to have been surprisingly infrequent and (not so surprisingly) rigorously
controlled. What never crossed our minds was that Carole Caplin would be around.

Cherie is a 48-year-old woman with a brain the size of Manchester - it must
have occurred to her that the Marie Claire piece would be an
opportunity to revitalise her reputation post-Cheriegate, in which case the last
thing she needed was for Caplin to feature in any way, never mind so
prominently. But we didn't crash through the window in balaclavas. We didn't
jump up from behind a hedge and ambush them. Cherie isn't in the same situation
as Prince Charles, who has to keep presenting Camilla to the public in the hope
they will finally accept her. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose
from Caplin being present. Cherie must have known all this and yet still she
beckoned us up.

Nothing that happened previously that day suggested anything so surprising
and unscheduled would occur. I keep reading that "Cherie invited the journalists
in". Though technically correct, this rather gives the impression that we'd been
handed an itinerary from Downing Street stating: "2:30pm, retire to the Blairs'
bedroom and take controversial and damaging photographs of Cherie and Carole on
the bed".

It wasn't quite like that. When Jane and I arrived at Matrix Chambers, Millar
made it clear that the day was to unfold her way or no way. That meant no tape
recorder or note-taking when I was with Cherie. Wouldn't that make it difficult
to get facts and notes straight? "Cherie doesn't want it to feel like a formal
interview,"† said Millar bluntly, making it clear that this was to be the
end of the conversation.

This was Millar's attitude all the way through - polite but firm and
sometimes not so polite. At one point when we were all travelling to the
Barnardo's appointment in the people carrier, Millar accused me of having my
tape recorder running secretly in my handbag. Since Millar has already gone
public with her frustrations at having been sidelined by Caplin, it seems
significant that Cherie didn't so much as look at Millar at this point, never
mind support her. Instead, Cherie gave me the briefest of sympathetic smiles
before turning away to gaze silently out of the window.

It was a different story when we first met Cherie at Matrix Chambers. The
first thing I noticed was that, as has often been said, she is softer and
prettier than photos suggest. The second was how ill at ease she seemed with an
alien media presence. If she had been a cat, I reckon the first sight of us
would have had her arching her back and hissing. For all her smiles, she came
across as shrill and tense. A charm-free zone.

Things warmed up in the car when she took it upon herself to serenade us with
her favourite show tunes. I had to smile when I saw that she had sung When
I'm Sixty-Four at the Yshingua University in China. I've had that happening
an inch from my nose, and let me tell you it was quite an experience. At the
time I was just relieved that Cherie had relaxed, but even then there was a
quite inappropriate mood of hysteria - Cherie singing away, rocking to and fro,
clutching my arm, and laughing raucously straight into my face.

Was this some bizarre strategy to disarm the journalist? Or, much more
likely, simply that Cherie's bad press, deserved and otherwise, had made it
impossible for her to behave normally with any journalists, even safe ones like
us who'd been vetted by her own offices?

Once we'd arrived at Downing Street, Millar sent us away, saying Cherie
needed to have lunch alone. What about "spending time" with Cherie in the flat?
Millar smiled tightly: we would have to come back later and she'd see what she
could do.

We went to sit in a restaurant around the corner to bitch and whinge, as
journalists do when they feel they're being kept at arm's length. We weren't to
know then that when we returned we would fluke it into the Blairs' flat
unaccompanied, directed there by a security guard who had presumably neglected
to alert Millar. Nor that we would stand there alone, confused and nonplussed,
for about a minute, trying to store up a blitz of images. The mess of toys
scattered around the grand piano. The baby-gate bolted to the Gone With The
Wind staircase. The ugly "government issue" art hanging on the wall. A
balloon with 50 on it tied to the back of a chair, reminding us it had recently
been the Prime Minister's birthday.

"Oh, hello."

We glanced up and saw Cherie leaning over the top banister, looking shocked.
After a moment's contemplation she beckoned us up. At this point my big fear was
that Millar would burst through the door and shoo us away, but it didn't happen.

It was only when we got to the top of the stairs that we noticed Caplin, the
Juicy Couture Rasputin herself, smiling serenely as she arranged clothes in
Cherie's messy dressing room. Cherie explained how she put in the fittings
herself, pointing out the rack that Tony "commandeered" for his ties - but I was
too busy staring disbelievingly at her rows of kinky-looking ankle boots. A
dressing table stood in the middle of the room, open drawers stuffed with
tights, underwear and cosmetics.

"No!" barked Cherie suddenly, and Jane lowered her camera. Cherie smiled:
"Not with knickers and tights in my hands." A little later she led us all into
her bedroom.

Quite how surreal all this was didn't hit home instantly, probably because
Jane and I were so bemused by the situation. It was difficult not to gawp around
the Prime Minister's bedroom (tidy, slightly sterile, it resembled a three-star
Swiss hotel room). Or at Caplin as she crept around, giving frequent comforting
eye-contact to Cherie as she chatted on about footwear, diets and body image. By
now she was a changed woman from the brittle charm-free zone we first
encountered - confident, relaxed, self assured, and, without doubt, dependent on
Caplin. While there is no kind of sapphic pulse between the two women (calm down
boys), and it's going a bit far to suggest that Caplin exercises a sinister
hypnotic hold over Cherie, this is definitely one of those intense friendships
where a lot of New Age validation and non-verbal reassurance goes on. "Am I
safe?" asks Cherie, with her eyes. "Yes, you're safe," flashes back Caplin. You
know the kind of thing. Or maybe this wasn't happening at all, and I'm guilty of
reading far too much into two female friends being supportive of each other.

I'll come clean here and say I rather like Caplin and can't see much wrong
with her except for the fact that she once had a dodgy boyfriend, in which case
hang us all. It's annoyed me more than once to see Caplin belittlingly described
in the media as "a former topless model" when, love or hate her, she seems to
have an awful lot more going on. I like Cherie too - she was truly great when
she spoke to the young women at the Barnardo's refuge that day. I also respect
her for sticking by Caplin despite what must have been intense pressure from
Downing Street and the media to drop her.

While I think that there's a side of Caplin that's definitely on the make,
with her "lifestyle" business, her videos and her Hello! interviews, in
a way she gives as much to Cherie as she takes away. If you were the Prime
Minister's wife, as highly strung as you were intelligent, stressed to the max,
constantly attacked by the press for being "frumpy" and "greedy", and surrounded
by censorious politicos who keep telling you to keep your mouth shut, you might
well feel you needed a friend like Caplin, too.

Maybe Cherie was displaying a wilful rebellious streak, an anti-Millar
stance, by having us up in her bedroom? Still, couldn't she have kept Caplin
hidden just for one day? Or at least exercised damage control by requesting that
no photographs be taken? Let's face it, you would never have caught Cherie's pal
Hillary Clinton in this kind of embarrassing situation.

I was thinking this even as Caplin clambered on to the bed beside Cherie with
the lip pencil, smiling soulfully into the eyes of her friend as she craned
forward. I thought it again as the actual application seemed to go on and on,
Jane crouching slightly to get her marvellous picture at precisely the same time
that Caplin's finger shot up in admonishment.

That's what is happening in that shot - not, as I keep reading, Caplin
showing her authority over Cherie so much as Caplin displaying her authority
over the press. A split-second earlier and Jane wouldn't have been able to get
her shot. A split-second later, Millar called up fuming about our unscheduled
tour Chez Blair. As Cherie later said to Jane in a glorious piece of
understatement: "I think I might be in trouble for you being in the flat."

Anyway, nobody died, and it's been a giggle reading some of the stuff on
Lippygate this week - the feng shui reports, photo-analysis and psychobabble. I
find it delicious to think that Cherie might have run around artfully
constructing a family mess to create the impression of a busy working mum for
her visiting magazine journalists, though I'm not convinced this was the case.
Nor do I think it's fair to surmise that Marie Claire stitched Cherie
Blair up. It is little known that Cherie tried to change quotes in my copy,
which Marie Claire changed back.

As a courtesy, Marie Claire also let Cherie see the photographs
before they were printed. Cherie displayed concern about You Know Which Ones but
Caplin was so upbeat and positive about them that the Prime Minister's wife
allowed herself to be swayed. Another day, another missed safety net.

Could this be the essential problem with Cherie Blair? Not the person she is
or the company she keeps, but her terrible wrenching innocence, even now, when
it comes to dealing with the media? Should we blame Fiona Millar and her partner
Alastair Campbell for guarding Cherie so closely, keeping her so green, that
when she actually does a one-to-one, she comes across as frosty and rude, then
over-compensates by singing in the car and inviting journalists into her bedroom
to watch her play slumber party? It seems to me that although Cherie is 48 and
has a highly skilled job, she is almost babyishly non-self-regulating in these
situations and will need to find her new PR guru fast.

Later that night I found Cherie about to leave the Asian Women of Achievement
Awards. Clutching her sari around herself she said to me: "I hope I won't be too
angry with you when this comes out." Something tells me that the only person
Cherie should be angry with is herself.